


What We Want, No More No Less

by sisaat



Category: Leverage
Genre: Eliot Spencer's Cooking, Getting Together, Healthy Relationships, Multi, POV Alec Hardison
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-02-22
Updated: 2017-02-22
Packaged: 2018-09-26 07:41:30
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,486
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/9874007
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/sisaat/pseuds/sisaat
Summary: "I think you're in love with us.""Yeah, so?"(ot3 get-together story where things don't go according to plan but in a good way)





	

**Author's Note:**

> This is a quick and terribly self-indulgent ot3 get-together fic that hopefully at least one other person will enjoy. Contains awkward writing, too many adverbs, and chicken.

 

Sitting in the kitchen with his laptop while Eliot was preparing dinner was a familiar comfort, but today Hardison was here for a reason and he was... well, not nervous, but... alright, he was nervous.

He and Parker had talked about this at lengths. They agreed that they loved Eliot and that it was painfully obvious that Eliot loved them too and they wanted to change the nature of their relationship with him. But now they needed to have that conversation with Eliot himself and Hardison could foresee an uphill battle to even get Eliot to admit anything, to himself or others, nevermind agree to give a polyamorous relationship a try. 

So Hardison had prepared what he would say carefully. He didn't want to spook Eliot and make him close the door on any possibility before they could present their case. So he wrote scripts to cover possible reactions and answers and he picked a time and place where Eliot was most at ease and that was dinnertime preparations. But now he was nervous. If Eliot said no, that was it. Hardison swallowed hard.

"If you got something to say, just say it," Eliot growled.

He wasn't ready. but he wasn't going to get any readier and there was no point in exasperating Eliot right now. How was this conversation supposed to start, again?

"I think you're in love with us." Not like that, that was how.

"Yeah, so?"

And of course Eliot just had to go and set his script on fire. He had expected denial, followed by curses (Eliot's) and tears (his) before he could get Eliot to even think about his feelings, but no, he just said 'yeah, so?' like that was nothing. He didn't even turn to look at him, just kept whisking the... juice thingy for the chicken (basting mixture, Google told him helpfully).

"So, uh... aren't you... sad?"

Eliot snorted, still stubbornly refusing to follow the script, and he did look over his shoulder this time, but only to roll his eyes at him.

"You watch too much TV, Hardison. This ain't a tragedy."

Hardison stared at him, at least until he grabbed a fistful of onions, herbs and various mysterious cooking things and pushed it in the chicken's butt. That just looked wrong and all kinds of unsexy, so he looked at his screen instead and let his nervous fingers quest on the keyboard (there were no new results for "how to ask your best friend to date you and your girlfriend" since last time he checked that morning).

"I like what I got with you two," Eliot continued in a softer tone. "I'm... happy. Happier than I've been in a long time. So I hope you weren't bringing this up because you wanted me gone now."

"No! No, of course not, man, we don't, we'd never... no."

He risked a glance back when he heard Eliot turn on the faucet. If he hadn't been so used to reading his body-language, he might had missed the way some tension left his shoulders even as he busied himself washing his hands.

"Then no, I'm not sad."

He should have let Parker do this. He had offered to be the one to talk to Eliot because he wanted him to be very clear on what it was they were suggesting and Parker didn't always have the words for that kind of things. But Parker understood Eliot and wouldn't have been thrown off by his unexpected honesty. She was used to going in without a script. Hardison needed a moment to get his feet back under him.

"What if I told you we're in love with you too?"

Eliot paused in the middle of sprinkling salt and pepper over the chicken (he was done with the stuffing, thank God, he was so not confessing his love to someone with their hand in a chicken's butt). He resumed his work after a few seconds, finished with the seasoning and placed the chicken in a pan on a bed of onion.

"Hardison... you and Parker worked really hard to build that thing you two have together. You really wanna mess with that?"

The answer came from the air duct before Hardison could speak up. "We already have something with you. You just said so."

He shouldn't be surprised that Parker decided to eavesdrop. If Eliot was, he didn't show it, but he didn't respond either. He brushed the... basting mixture over the chicken in smooth, precise gestures. 

"She's right, you know. We've had a thing for a long time, the three of us. And that never messed anything up. We just want to... redefine that thing, if that's something you want too."

Eliot covered the pot with foil, poked some holes around the edges, placed the pot in the oven and started the timer on his phone before turning around and joining him at the table. He sat in the chair facing his and stared down at his hands resting on the wooden surface instead of looking at him.

"You serious about this?"

"We wouldn't be having this conversation if I wasn't."

Eliot met his eyes briefly and he looked... mostly scared, but also hesitant and a little hopeful and some other things that were hard to identify because they all tried to express themselves on his face at the same time. He moved his lips as if to talk a few times but no sound came out. Hardison closed the laptop, pushed it aside and reached forward to place a hand on top of one of Eliot's. The hitter stared at it but didn't pull away.

"Look, this doesn't have to be anything you don't want it to be. We got experience in that. I know you need space and we're cool with that. And if you don't want to kiss me or anything that's fine too."

"I wouldn't mind kissing you," he mumbled, still looking at Hardison's hand on his.

"O-okay, I'm cool with that too. Very cool with that."

Hardison hadn't heard Parker get out of the air duct, but Eliot didn't startle when she wrapped  her arms around him and dropped her chin on his head. "I was scared too, at the beginning."

"I'm not scared."

"But we made it work even if it wasn't normal," she continued, ignoring his blatant lie. She started rocking slightly from foot to foot, pulling Eliot along. "We can make this work too. And it won't be other-people-normal. It'll be us-normal."

Eliot stayed silent and Parker kept rocking him. Some of the tension leeched out of him. Hardison gave his hand a little squeeze.

"We don't have to make this a big jump. We can just wander in the general direction we want and see where we get."

Eliot's hand moved under his. Hardison thought he was going to pull away, but instead he turned it around so they were holding hands.

"I think I'd like that," he whispered.

Hardison stood up without letting go of Eliot's hand and walked around the table to join the other two. He exchanged a look with Parker and she stopped her rocking motion. He had gotten a lot more free with spontaneous display of affection with Eliot over the years, but the moment felt fragile so he made sure to telegraph his moves when he rested his free hand on Eliot's jaw, leaned down and pressed their lips together. 

He didn't linger, not right now when this was so new. Parker gave him a satisfied smile and planted a kiss on top of Eliot's hair. The hitter looked down and fought off a smile without much success. He cleared his throat and tried for gruffness.

"If we're done, I still got dessert to figure out."

"Ooooh, dessert!" Parker cheered, letting him go so he could stand. "Can we have that chocolate mousse again?"

And with that, the Most Important Conversation was over. Hardison's knees went weak with relief and he collapsed into Eliot's recently vacated chair. It had all gone a lot more smoothly than he had expected, without shouting or tears. Or almost no tears. He was getting a little emotional now, watching these two people he loved very much argue over dessert ("I _told_ you the mousse needs to chill for hours. You should have told me this morning that you'd want that." "How was I supposed to know this morning what I'd want that for dessert?"). He stood back up, rushed to them and pulled them both into a hug, maybe crying in their hair a little.

"I just wanted to say that I love you two so much," he sniffled.

He got a pat on the back and a 'there, there' from Parker, and a 'dammit Hardison' from Eliot. Everything was still the same where it mattered, different where they wanted it and it would be perfect because they would make it so.


End file.
